Echoing the criticism of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who called out the migrants for using their women and children as "shields" during clashes with Mexican police, Trump mocked the "bad hombres" streaming northward as he addressed a defense industry roundtable:

"To show you how brave they are – they put all the women and children up front."

After initially breaching the fence at a checkpoint earlier today, migrants clashed with a group of about fifty police armed with riot gear and pepper spray. Four officers were reportedly injured in the melee. Others used improvised rafts and ropes to cross the river that forms much of the Guatemala-Mexico border. Mexico has dispatched 500 federales to its southern border in the hope of stemming the migrant flow.